She raced along the M4 but heavy traffic on the North Circular meant the eighty-mile journey took well over two hours, and by the time she got to Highgate it was mid-morning. The agency was located in a maisonette above a wholefood shop and consisted of half a dozen rooms filled with desks and screens and chatter. As Silva entered several journalists came over to greet her, and it wasn’t until she’d spoken to them all that she was able to climb the stairs to the top floor where Neil Milligan, the editor, had his office. The room was a nook tucked in under the eaves and was crammed with piles of old newspapers and magazines. A desk sat beneath a skylight and a large TV hung on one wall showing rolling news. There’d been another terrorist atrocity, this one in Hamburg. A man had run amok with a knife and three people were dead. Not religious extremists this time: the attacker had been a white neo-Nazi, the victims young Turkish immigrants. Seeing Silva, Milligan rose from behind his desk and came over and hugged her. He was a thin man, his narrow face covered with a grey beard, his features sharp, his eyes keen.

‘Where’s it going to end?’ he said. ‘I’m getting tired of writing the same story over and over.’

Silva shrugged. Quite why Milligan expected she, of all people, would have an answer, she didn’t know.

‘Thanks for coming to the funeral, Neil,’ she said. ‘Thanks for setting up the fund too.’

Milligan had signalled his desire to create a scholarship in Silva’s mother’s name. The scholarship was intended to sponsor a journalism student through university. It was a nice touch and something her mother would have approved of.

‘Not much good can come of this.’ Milligan gestured at the screen. ‘But it’s important we try to cling onto some sort of hope.’

The final word of the sentence cut right through Silva. Hope. Karen Hope. ‘Yes.’

The response was flat and Milligan picked up on it.

‘You OK, Rebecca?’ He tutted to himself. ‘I mean, fuck, of course you’re not OK. What I meant was—’

‘Forget it, I know what you meant.’ Silva dismissed Milligan’s apology. ‘My mother was working on a trafficking story when she was killed, right?’

Milligan recoiled, almost as if Silva was being disrespectful by getting straight to the point. ‘Yes. She was trying to follow the migrant flows across the Mediterranean, talk to the victims, the perpetrators, the NGOs, the authorities. It was sheer bad luck she was interviewing the head of the charity when the attack happened.’ Milligan moved round and sat behind his desk. Shuffled a sheaf of papers. He appeared distracted. ‘I want you to know we’re not dropping the story, and I fully intend to publish something with your mother’s name on the byline.’

‘What happened to her laptop?’